Thursday, January 10, 2013

Golda Meir

Bust of Golda Meir by Beatrice Goldfine, Golda Meir Square
Broadway and West 39th Street
New York, September 2007

The statue was dedicated on Oct. 3, 1984, which happened to be a busy day for civic dedications in New York. About half an hour before an official commemoration at the corner of 49th Street honoring the former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, the then-Manhattan borough president Andrew J. Stein filled in for Mayor Ed Koch, who was in Washington that day, at the dedication of Golda’s statue. Stein’s uninspired remarks, as summarized by a report in The New York Times the next day, offered an unassailable, if not unimaginative, justification for Meir’s immortalization: “Of all the Israeli leaders,” Stein said helpfully, “she was the leader Americans knew best.”